Metropoulos Forum

Guitar specs:

Ash body
Callaham vintage strat bridge
Maple/Maple neck
Switch: StewMac Megaswitch P Model (Paul Reed Smith switching)

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Electronics ... ml#details

Pickups: Bare Knuckle VHII calibrated set

After having it wired up today and testing it out on my Variplex, the neck pickup seems awfully bassy. If I play some power chords, seems very saturated.

Maybe it's been too long since I've played a guitar with two humbuckers, but man it's bassy.

Other things I'm going to try :

1. Lowering the neck pickup.
2. Putting some kind of sheilding in the cavity. (None yet!)

Also, the tone knob seems to work from 1 to 2 and then it's just full on. Also, it's wired backwards, so when you crank it, you get the opposite.

Anyone experience the same experience with neck pickups and old marshalls?

thanks.

Neck humbuckers are always a little problematic when played with a lot of gain. No wonder that many artists use the neck pickup only for soloing in the upper registers of the neck where this is not an issue.

Possible solutions would be a lower output neck pickup (e.g. a BKP vintage model as opposed to a vintage hot model as the VH II) or a humbucker-sized P90 (e.g. a BKP Mississippi Queen, Amber P94, Gibson P94, GFS Mean 90 or GFS Dream 90). The Amber and the MQ sound quite similar, the Amber has a bit more highs. Both have less bass than a humbucker. The GFS pickups have less mids and more highs. The bass can still appear overbearing with these due to their midscoop.

A really clean neck humbucker would be the Bill Lawrence (Wilde USA) L-500C. That's what I use in a Les Paul that has been a problem guitar for the neck position. However it would be a lot louder than the BKP VH II and is therefore not recommended if you want to stick with the VH II in the bridge. It also is quite deep and does not fit in every guitar.

Lowering the pickup would help. Lower it more on the bass side than on the treble side. Shielding the cavity will do nothing to solve the bassiness problem.

As regards the tone pot wired backwards: tone pots are usually audio taper due to the fact that the human ear's sensitivity is not linear. If you wire the pot backwards you have a reverse audio pot which appears to be even less linear than a linear pot. If this disturbs you then I recommend to wire the tone pot the standard way.

Good luck!
Stephan

Well, it seems the switch I bought is not going to work as intended.

It's a StewMac Megaswitch, modeled after the switching in a PRS. It will only work properly if the pickups are reverse polarity. I emailed Tim at Bare Knuckle and he confirmed (as I thought) that the VHII set is standard polarity and NOT reverse polarity.

This might explain why some of the positions in the switch were significantly quieter (pos. 4). Although another culprit might the fact that the screw side has more windings than the slug.

Bought a simple three way switch and hope to wire it up today. Will report the findings soon.

I have not tried it but here you go:

http://www.glab.com.pl/tip_6_en

Interested in opinions on above or other tweaking with passive components.

Couldn't believe how much trouble it was to wire up a simple 3 way switch for two humbuckers. bought the switch from a local dealer with no instructions (No brand name).

Then went to StewMac's site to look at their diagram. Well, turns out that the diagram wasn't quite right for this switch. Figured it out and it sound great!

Will take a look at the website. Looks interesting.

thanks All!